Zambia : The Dangerous Return Of PF Staged Political Violence

By Michael Lombe

Zambia has been here before. And we must not go back. The Patriotic Front has a documented history of manufacturing crises to play the victim and stoke division. The most notorious chapter came under Mr Steven Kampyongo as Minister of Home Affairs, but the script was written earlier.

Under the late President Michael Sata, the PF conjured an imaginary group called “Tonga under Oaths”. The then Lusaka Province Police Commissioner, Ms Charity Katanga, was deployed to give it weight. The claim was grotesque: that the group had killed a Bemba child in Mazabuka and was ordering all Bemba people out of Southern Province.

President Sata saw through it. While swearing in Mr Wynter Kabimba as Justice Minister, he dismissed the tale outright. Turning to the then Defence Minister, Mr Geoffrey Bwalya Mwamba, one of the architects of the plot, he said the idea was fake and must be dropped immediately before it caused war.

The PF did not stop. Next came the story that Bemba fishermen were being chased off the Kafue River. The Disaster Management and Mitigation Unit delivered tents to “displaced” people who did not exist. The lie collapsed.

Then came the market fires and the gassings. Hundreds died including schoolchildren. Paid voices were lined up to blame the then opposition leader, Mr Hakainde Hichilema and the UPND. That too failed, because Zambians refused to be baited.

Now, in opposition, the PF and its Tonse Alliance appear to be dusting off the same playbook.

Leaked reports reveals a plan to stage attacks on their own campaign teams as they tour Southern Province. Recruits, it is said will be hired, masked, and instructed to stone their own vehicles in Monze, Choma and Kalomo. Media teams will be on standby. The purpose is clear: run back to Eastern and Northern provinces with video and say, “This is what Southerners are doing to us.”

If these allegations are true, they are not politics. They are sabotage.

This is the politics of arson, not argument. It seeks power not through policy, but through fear, tribal baiting, and staged blood.

Zambians rejected this in 2016. They rejected it in 2021. They will reject it again in 2026.

We owe it to the market traders, the schoolchildren, and the farmers who paid the price last time to say it plainly: do not light this country on fire for votes.

The law must act. The public must watch. And the media must not be used as a prop in a staged drama.

The past has instructed us. Let us not repeat it.

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